In her message for World Book and Copyright Day 2011, UNESCO Director-General, Ms. Irina Bokova declared that the Second UNESCO World Forum on culture and cultural industries will be held in June in Monza, Italy. Locally, in an effort to mark World Book and Copyright Day, and in a show of support for the forum on culture and cultural industries, I would like to share a thought on the creative industry of the Caribbean, which was delivered in the form of a lecture titled, ‘CREATIVE INDUSTRY AND THE CURRENCY OF IDEAS’ BY ADRIAN AUGIER at the Theatre Guild of Guyana on Monday, April 11, 2011.

I HAVE been asked to open with a few words on CULTURAL INDUSTRIES, and wish to do so in both my voices. It will be slightly unconventional. You will hear both the artist and the economist, because the indivisible self knows the dilemma only too well.

Last April, I had the honour of receiving a particularly prestigious award, and was allowed to say a few words in my defense.  My acceptance opened with the following affirmation:

Artists and other creative brethren trade in the currency of ideas.
While the world sleeps we toil, willingly into the night
composing, carving, painting… perfecting!
By dint of sweat and sleepless nights, we make our dreams incarnate.
This is the purpose of our being.

So, do not expect us to be politely dispassionate
for the art we make is not just for ourselves.  It is also for you.
It comes not from us, but through us. And, it is offered up,
like a new born child, to this imperfect world which first inspired it.
In this faith, we are like mothers
surviving on portions of pain and love, fear and optimism.

To briefly relate this philosophy to creative industries in the Caribbean, I will take these portions in turn:  Pain, love, fear and optimism.

On the subject of PAIN
It pains me to think that in this Caribbean, which we have built from nothing but the creative imagination and the hunger of survival, our leaders still do not understand the value of art.  It was not by technology we survived; nor by capital; nor by monopoly of some indispensable economic resource, unless you count cheap labour.

It was by dint of creativity and our dogged determination not to die that we transformed the nothing that was left to us; transformed these abandoned islands into post-emancipation communities; into post-colonial nations; and ultimately, into a Caribbean society of which we used to be so fiercely proud. 

Not so long ago, we used to entrust that society to leaders who were… well, Leaders: Men and women of vision beyond their own two-by-four constituencies and the next lucrative kickback.  What happened with that?  When did we start electing morons to office, and why?  Did we so lose respect for ourselves and our children that we now appoint feckless idiots into office to undo the work of our forefathers?  How did this dumbing-down of the Caribbean dream take place?  This is a painful question…but it has to be answered, and the trend reversed. 

If artists are to trade in the currency of ideas, we must have a larger goal, a big agenda, a construct to which we aspire as a people.  If we allow our existence to be defined by these little men and their short-term expediency, then there will soon be nothing noble to paint, or sing, or dance or write about; nothing that is brave and beautiful and inspiring… and ours. 

So we might as well consume the digital trash of other societies.  After all, they own most of the technology that we can only crave.  Thanks to punitive import duties and shortsighted taxes, we deny our creative producers the necessary access to the very capital which their competitors can take for granted.  So frankly, it should come as no surprise that those competitors do a much better job of processing and packaging their filth into the tasty bite-sized tidbits which we so willingly consume.  

It is painful to remember that the Caribbean once counted itself among the most progressive regions of the world.  We had so much to say, and so much to offer the world as a model of economic, political and social progress.  Then this…this reckless flirtation with everything that is anathema to our prosperity: Hopeless government; reckless development; environmental irresponsibility; mindless media; baseless education.  No wonder we are a society adrift.

On the subject of LOVE
Whatever our reasons, we still love this drifting Caribbean. Like the evil child of our own making, we stay and mind it.  Even when we have more lucrative options abroad, we choose not to leave; we choose to be here where it counts for something, rather than to be out there where all the money counts for so much and yet so little.

Meanwhile, we know that this strange and slowly starving love is mainly based on nostalgia; we know that our romantic notions of family and heritage are becoming more and more tenuous with each generation.

And yet, with that same misguided love, we allow our children to be assimilated into foreign and hostile cultures.  We work so hard to buy them all the pretty plastic things which virtually guarantee that they will not return to us.  We give them all the trappings of the new global consciousness: The fads, the fly, the fast, the furious… but none of the free old-fashioned guiding principles which once ushered in a golden age of Caribbean community. 

Surely we can see that same love makes authors write, painters paint, and poets pen their verses.  But what will we write if no one is reading? What, if we lose the language of our ancestors, will we say with all the new technologies that we crave? What will we sing beyond the ‘wave you rag’ that we have not already sung…. or heard from someone else’s mouth.

On the subject of FEAR
I am afraid that we are losing not only our language, but the value system that goes with it.  There is a whole generation of children whose imaginations are slipping far away from us.  Soon, there will be no words to explain the holy chalice that was the calabash; the lifeline over water that once was the pirogue; the chilling apparition of soukouyan; the moonlit mystery of silk cotton trees; the unscarred hill of purest green; the unencumbered beach before the big hotel; the un-mortgaged soul; the first carnival…

The same children who dress in pretty beads and feathers do not know that Carnival was once a statement of rebellion, of social and political defiance, long before it became the biggest ‘Partay’ in the world.  So what are they going to sing?

I fear that our children are being sacrificed to the global one-eyed monster. Yes! The same one we set upon the shrine in the best corner of our living rooms!  We set our children down before it, forgot about the on/off switch, and walked away.

Well, the monster thrived on our love of its own imported content, and has reduced our babies into cartoons: Two-dimensional caricatures of themselves.  And now, the monster is making its own babies by the millions:  Babies that can be carried ‘round in the pocket and the schoolbag. 

Perhaps they even named the babies after us: Little black berries in the sun.  They make us walk with our heads down, staring at their screens, instead of holding our heads up and checking our world which is falling down around us.  The children can no longer name the mountains and the trees.  There is no ‘app’ for that.

I fear that despite a remarkable wealth of talent, young artists in the Caribbean are typically poor.  Very few have any access to formal training.  Many are self-taught, and most have no academic qualifications beyond primary, much less secondary school. 

The formal education system, reflecting the wider society, does not validate creative talent, and so does great disservice to those who possess the invaluable resource.  If they show an aptitude for art or independent thinking, they will be quickly branded as non-academic and shunted into B-streams, a.k.a. vocational studies. 

And, judged incapable of becoming doctors or lawyers, who, in our imagination, sit on either side of God, they remain unorganised, exploited by the tourist racket, underemployed, or engaged in marginal jobs to sustain their part-time love of art.   “You want to study theatre…?   I en sen’ you to school fer dat.  Go get a real job!”

In this day and age of CXC, it is unconscionable that half of our secondary students don’t learn Caribbean History, even fewer, Literature, and only a fraction are exposed to any poetry at all.   This is the picture from the Ministry. 
So, if Black people don’t know their language and their history, whose story are they going to tell, with all that technology suddenly at their disposal, and what will we consume if we produce nothing of our own?

This makes little sense in a country with such a formidable artistic and cultural legacy.  This makes no sense in an economy with high youth unemployment; in a society which needs to sustainably develop artistic and cultural products for its tourism, entertainment, education, media, and community development.

On the subject of optimism
Since I will not leave, I must live here.  Since I will not be run out of my country by social fragmentation, by rampant crime, by political stupidity, by short-sighted private sectors, by comatose regionalism, I must stay and see what I can make.   There must be something I can make, for, as Derek Walcott says, “if there is nothing here, then there is everything to be made.”

And I have to believe that we can make something better.  I have no choice.  I have to hope that there are people just like you who understand the great legacy that is being eroded, mostly by neglect and our own complacency.

Because that is the way it is
don’t mean that’s how it should be

Yes, we need change, but most of all, we have to want to change.  We need an aggressive resistance, a revolution of thought and thinking, a pause and a looking in.  Thirty years after his death, we still need a dose of Brother Bob, because in the abundance of water, the fool is [still] thirsty.  So we need a resounding ‘no’ to the neglect, the shortsightedness, the lack of enlightened leadership.  And we have to find the children wherever they are and reach out to them in whatever language we have left between us. 

In my philosophy, it is not tourism or finance or oil or gas, or rice or sugar or bananas… No! It is the creative imagination of this region that is its greatest resource, and frankly, only that will save us.  As global economic competition intensifies, we have to carve out a niche in which we can dominate.  The one thing that we still do best is being ‘Caribbean’.  So let us do that… Please.

Adrian Augier is the Caribbean Laureate for Arts and Letters 2010. He is an economist, and an award-winning poet and producer. For more information on the Laureate and his work, visit adrianaugier.blogspot.com
World Book and Copyright Day falls on April 23)

WHAT’S HAPPENING:
•    A UNESCO-sponsored one-week creative writing workshop is set for August 2011; limited places available on a ‘first-come-first-serve’ basis. Facilitators will include local and international teachers/writers. Please contact me for more information.
•    Unforeseen circumstances have forced the cancellation of a book exhibition and a
lecture on copyright to mark World Book and Copyright Day billed for the National Library. But the invitation is still valid for any occasion when a thought is transformed into words, paintings, song, poetry, sculptures, plays, films and other art forms. Let’s hear your thoughts on copyright.    
(To respond to this author, either call him on (592) 226-0065 or send him an email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com)